UVA Dean sues Rolling Stone for publishing Jackie’s false rape story

A University of Virginia associate dean of students filed a multimillion dollar defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine Tuesday, alleging that it portrayed her as callous and indifferent to allegations of sexual assault on campus and made her the university’s “chief villain” in a now-debunked story about a fraternity gang rape.

Nicole Eramo is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages from Rolling Stone, its parent company Wenner Media and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the investigative journalist who wrote the explosive account of sexual assault on the campus in Charlottesville, Va. The magazine retracted the story after news organizations and the Columbia University journalism school found serious flaws in it.

Eramo, who is the university’s chief administrator dealing with sexual assaults, argues in the lawsuit that the story destroyed her credibility, permanently damaged her reputation and caused her emotional distress. She assailed the account as containing numerous falsehoods that the magazine could have avoided if it had worked to verify the story of its main character, a student named Jackie who alleged she was gang raped in 2012 and that the university mishandled her case.

“Rolling Stone and Erdely’s highly defamatory and false statements about Dean Eramo were not the result of an innocent mistake,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court. “They were the result of a wanton journalist who was more concerned with writing an article that fulfilled her preconceived narrative about the victimization of women on American college campuses, and a malicious publisher who was more concerned about selling magazines to boost the economic bottom line for its faltering magazine, than they were about discovering the truth or actual facts.”

[…]“Erdely and Rolling Stone’s epic failure of journalism was the result of biased, agenda-driven reporting,” the lawsuit says. The suit claims that the magazine’s account represented “a purposeful avoidance of the truth, and an utter failure to investigate the accuracy of Jackie’s claims.”

The magazine also printed a photo illustration of Eramo that she argues is inflammatory; the lawsuit says that the magazine turned a mundane Cavalier Daily student newspaper photo of her addressing a classroom and turned it into a wild-eyed image of her sitting in an office and giving a thumbs-up in front of a distraught sexual assault victim as protesters hold signs outside. The lawsuit claims the doctored image “demonstrates the lengths Erdely and Rolling Stone were willing to go to portray Dean Eramo as a villain.”

The complaint details that in the wake of the story’s publication, Eramo received hundreds of spiteful e-mails from alumni and others who judged her based on her portrayal in Rolling Stone. In addition to rape and death threats, the messages described Eramo as a “wretched rape apologist” and “a disgusting, worthless piece of trash” who should “burn in hell forever.”

Yes, that’s what we call “radical feminism”. The whole point of radical feminism is to tell lies and make fake statistics to make women look like victims, and men look like evil brutes. Then the government steps in and fixes everything, e.g. – giving women free birth control pills. And that’s why feminists vote for bigger and bigger government, because they have been told, through these myths and fake statistics, that they are victims. This is the same big government, by the way, that is now going to war with freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Should Christians care about puncturing the myths that cause people to vote for the big government that comes after us? We better start making the connections and getting in the game now, before it’s too late.

We as Christians really need to consider why people are voting for the bigger secular government that turns around and trashes our liberties, for example, with the Hobby Lobby case and the mandate that companies pay for drugs that cause abortions. If you don’t want Christian-owned companies to be forced to do bad things, then understand that you have to counter the reasons why non-Christians vote for bigger government. If it’s global warming, you have to defeat that. If it’s higher minimum wage, you have to defeat that. And I am telling you right now, there are a lot of women out there who are being led by their emotions into disastrous situations of their own making, and then turning to big government for a bailout, because feminists are telling them that it’s all the fault of those evil men. If you want your religious liberty, your right to work, your right to keep what you earn, then you’d better start connecting the dots and confronting the people around you. Christians, we cannot absorb doctrines like radical feminism into our worldview, we have to fight against it by telling the truth.

Your last paragraph was like a modern day Paul Revere in his 60’s Detroit Muscle Car firing on all 8 cylinders alerting the sleeping citizenry “The Secularists are Coming!…..and “The enemy is US!”

So called good conservative Christians are doing some really BAD things in the Public Square because they’ve bought the lie that according to separation of church and state, the state must be completely secular….with zero forethought that secular “morality and justice” is the antithesis of God’s Law of morality and justice. In other words secularism is NOT morally neutral as “sold to the public”, but is the elimination of God’s gift of morality and civic justice through Moses.

Mention this topic – theonomy – to your pastoral staff and get ready to be informed that YOU and that kind of retrograde thinking are the problem in Christianity today. “Why God’s Law no longer applies because of The Cross….and further there is no need to repent in order to be saved…because Jesus loves you just the way you are. [hug] And we wonder why lawlessness is ripping our nation apart????

After sitting through a sermon about the repentance of Ninevah in which it was never mentioned exactly why a PAGAN nation would suddenly repent of their form of worship and government/culture to embrace a totally alien God and form of government/culture after the service I waited in line to ask the pastor some questions. He didn’t seem to even grasp my question — To WHAT did Ninevah embrace? He then began being the “expert” condescending to an ignorant woman…so I countered with Romans 13 —- God’s sovereignty over government – ie no magistrate or man made law can be in opposition to God’s Law unless anarchy and totalitarianism are considered acceptable forms of government because in God’s Sovereignty government is there to protect those things God has declared “Good”. The pastor in order to protect his elite status then told me that Romans 13 wasn’t going to be true until Jesus returned.

A complete WHOPPER of “new” eschatological revelation!! So in this pastor’s theology – God is not really sovereign….and I’m the idiot.

Here’s the paradox rippling out across the nation and earth – the more man believes himself capable of bestowing rights, privileges, and providence on himself and others …the reality is the elimination of EVERYONE’s Creator-endowed rights. ….and this reality has zero connection to any individual’s belief in God. This paradox speaks to the eternal nature of God and the statement in our Declaration that all men are endowed by their Creator with CERTAIN…[fixed].. inalienable rights.

Man stepping over his limitations much??? Our Constitution states what our government is limited to do…but we keep rendering to Caesar those things that belong to God…bestowing rights, privileges and providence to ourselves and others…and passing that giant tax payer funded collection plate to “prevent cultural decline”. …and in REAL economics [God’s FIXED Laws of economics], you get what you reward.